The Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) recently won a Distinguished Achievement Award from the Association of Educational Publishers for NFTE’s mathematics curriculum “Entrepreneurship: Owning Your Future”. From the announcement: “Written by NFTE Founder Steve Mariotti, the curriculum teaches fundamentals of mathematics as well as comprehensive guide to developing a business plan. It focuses on critical basic business skills including business communications, negotiating, business ethics, social responsibility, time management, and goal setting.” We interviewed Mr. Mariotti for the August 2009 issue of Kaizen (PDF). Read the full-length interview here.

Jeffrey Orduno, Rockford College alum and associate at McGreevy Williams, gave a CEE-sponsored talk last week at Rockford College. Here is Stephen Hicks’s interview with him on property rights and the law:

Judy Estrin, CEO of JLabs, is the co-founder of seven technology companies.  She was the Chief Technology Officer of Cisco Systems from 1998 to 2000 and has served on the boards of Rockwell and Sun Microsystems. Currently, she is on the Board of Directors of the Walt Disney Company and FedEx, the advisory board of Stanford’s School of Engineering and Bio-X interdisciplinary program, and the University of California President’s Science and Innovation Advisory Board. Most recently, she is the author of Closing the Innovation Gap (McGraw-Hill, 2008). We met with Ms. Estrin in Menlo Park, California to explore her thoughts on educating and managing for entrepreneurship and innovation.

Kaizen: What was it like growing up in a high-powered science-and-engineering family?

Estrin: That’s hard to answer because I don’t know anything but growing up steeped in science. A lot of the trips we took during the summer were to academic scientific conferences throughout the world. As I talk about in the preface of Closing the Innovation Gap, it wasn’t just that my parents were both academics, but both were Ph.D.s in electrical engineering — it was quite rare at the time for a woman to have a Ph.D. in electrical engineering. And so I just grew up in an environment where I was surrounded by academics and scientists.

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Ray Stata is co-founder of Analog Devices, Inc., based in Norwood, Massachusetts. As of 2009, ADI serves over 60,000 customers, has 9,000 employees and a market capitalization of over $6 billion. Mr. Stata received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from MIT. He served as ADI’s CEO from 1971 to 1996 and is currently chairman of the board. We met with Mr. Stata in Norwood to explore his thoughts on bootstrapping a start-up, leadership in innovative companies, and the challenges and opportunities of globalization.

Kaizen: You were injured playing basketball in high school in Pennsylvania, and that led to your going to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology?

Stata: Right. It was quite fortuitous that I jammed myself in a wall and injured my neck. So I ended up in a hospital for several days—in traction. Next to me there was an elderly gentleman who had spent his career as an engineer. By that time, as a sophomore in high school, I already was thinking about engineering as a career. I didn’t know much about engineering or anything about engineering schools. So I used this opportunity to quiz this guy. He told me a lot about what engineers do and about the best engineering schools.

What came out loud and clear was, “If you want to become an engineer and get an engineering education, there’s really only one place to consider, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.” He said, “Just focus on MIT and go there; it’s the best.” I had never heard of MIT, but when I returned home, I started reading up on MIT and set my sights on going there.
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Anja Hartleb-Parson, CEE’s Research & Publications Manager, talks with Fall 2009 guest speaker Joshua Hall about his presentation on “The Dilemma of School Finance Reform.” Professor Hall explains why we are spending more on public education over time but may not be getting our money’s worth. Watch the video below.

Dr. Stephen Hicks, CEE’s Executive Director, talks with Dr. Jerry Kirkpatrick, a Fall 2009 CEE guest speaker, about his book, In Defense of Advertising. Dr. Kirkpatrick addresses several typical criticisms of advertising and explains why advertising is important to a healthy, productive capitalist society.

Watch Parts I & II of the interview below.

Part I:

Dr. Stephen Hicks, CEE’s Executive Director, talked recently with Fall 2009 guest speaker Dr. Jerry Kirkpatrick about why having a philosophical background helps businesspeople attain greater clarity and confidence in making important, ethically-charged decisions. Below are parts I and II of the interview.

Part I:

Part II:

Steve Mariotti is the founder of the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE). Before NFTE, Mr. Mariotti was a successful entrepreneur and a teacher in some of New York’s most challenging schools. Because of his innovative methods for teaching business concepts Mariotti was named Teacher of the Year for New York State in 1988. We met with Mr. Mariotti in New York to explore his thoughts on his passion for teaching and entrepreneurship education as an exit strategy from poverty for at-risk youth.

Kaizen: You were mugged in 1981 by three teenagers in New York’s Lower East Side, and that led you to a major career change?

Mariotti: It did. The mugging caught me emotionally off guard, and I had a lot of flashbacks afterward. It got me interested in the question of why some kids would humiliate me over a small amount of money. And I started to think: Had they been able to sell me something or ask me to invest in a business deal, they could have gotten a lot more money and it would have been a win/win situation for everyone. And that really got me interested in a new career path in education, which turned out great.
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The latest issue of Kaizen features our interview with Steve Mariotti, founder of the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), an organization dedicated to providing entrepreneurship education to low-income youths.

Also featured in Kaizen are CEE guest speakers David Mayer and C. Bradley Thompson, an interview with Steve Kadamian on his entrepreneurship course, and a report on the 2009 High School Entrepreneur Day.

A PDF version of Kaizen is available here. We will soon post separately the full interview with Mr. Mariotti.

If you would like to receive a complimentary issue of the print version of Kaizen, please email your name and postal address to CEE [at] Rockford.edu.

Jerry Reinsdorf is Chairman of the Chicago Bulls and the Chicago White Sox, United Center, and U.S. Cellular Field. He is also a partner in Bojer Financial Ltd., a real estate investment company. We spoke with Mr. Reinsdorf to explore his thoughts on sports, the business of sports, and success in life.

Kaizen: You grew up in Brooklyn when the Dodgers were there. Were you a fan as a youth?

Reinsdorf: I was an avid Dodgers fan. Everybody in Brooklyn lived and died with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Kaizen: You went to college at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and then earned a law degree from Northwestern University in Chicago. Looking back, what was the most valuable business skill or knowledge you acquired while a student?

Reinsdorf: In college I was involved in a lot of extracurricular activities—I was the business manager of the newspaper, business manager of the yearbook, and participated in many other activities. It gave me a start in trying to think like a businessman. I don’t think I learned anything in law school about business. I did learn one incredibly valuable thing in law school—I had a professor who taught us that if somebody asks you a question, your answer should be, “Why do you want to know?” Obviously that helps you frame the answer and puts everything in context.
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